Seaing is Believing

I speculated at the end of my last post that it was important not to underestimate the impact of sea travel and transportation on the environment. If you want to know why make sure to check out a 2007 article by Dalsoren et. al.

Although it focusses primarily on the regional impact around Norway and NW Russia, it is filled with some staggering statistics. For example Norwegian coastal ship traffic is responsible for more than one third of all Norwegian Nitrogen oxide emissions, and is one of a handful of industrial sectors that will not see a decrease in sulphur emissions in the coming decade. By 2015 in fact sea transportation could perhaps cause a 4% increase in sulphur and nitrate deposition across the study area.

While the study highlights and models the problems and large scale impacts of the shipping industry, it offers little in the way of solutions: the extent to which a solution if offered, in fact, is through reiterating that pollutant levels need to be reduced in order to allow the area to recover. Certainly not the most constructive advice.

Not everyone sees sea transportation to be such a major contributor to global environmental change, and next time I will be looking at some differing opinions as to type of travel could be more detrimental.